Hello, I take and make photographs. Here are some of my favourite projects.

Abstract Old Town

Intentional camera movement and multiple exposure experiments aiming to capture the colours of the Old Town in Nice, France.

Both are lost

“When one glove is missing, both are lost”(Roger McGough 2000)

Losing a glove is, in a small way, a peculiarly disorienting experience. You lose something that leaves behind its mirror image to remind you of the loss.

Seeing items that other people have left behind in public reminds me of my own memory lapses over the years (well, the ones I can remember, anyway).

I’d already been collecting photos of lost gloves for a few years when I started investigating aspects of memory as part of my photographic practice. I’m particularly interested in the unreliability of human memory. The two threads became connected in my mind. Everybody loses something every day, though usually just a memory, and it’s usually unimportant. Usually.

Evidence of other people’s lapses of attention or memory reassures me that I’m not alone in my forgetfulness; at the same time, it triggers an oddly symmetrical train of thought about remembering forgetting.

With these images I want to capture a middle-aged sense of realising that you’ve forgotten something: a fleeting moment of panic followed by the nagging sense that this forgetfulness might be symptomatic of slowly losing your faculties.

Memory Waves

Portraits of members of a nostalgic singalong group, framed by the sound waves of their own singing.

Two Kinds of People?

Politics, like photography, simplifies.

On 24th June 2016 the UK woke up to find itself newly sorted by the EU Referendum into binary, oppositional tribes. A referendum that was itself fought on an extreme oversimplification of a complex situation was followed by a doubling-down of this regrettable tendency for the politics of division, as new “us vs them” labels emerged overnight.

Data is a potent simplifier; percentages and charts can confer an undeserved authenticity onto a situation. Narratives emerged to explain the result, falling into the generalisation trap and painting whole groups of people as not only homogenous but diametrically opposed to those who had put their cross in the other box.

I looked at the last five towns I’ve lived in according to their split in the EU Referendum result. I want to encourage some reflection about the absurdity of such ‘weaponised generalisation’ – how much easier it is to lean on divisive stereotypes than to understand the nuances of human behaviour and the range of opinions and values; how simplification, though tempting, can be harmful.

The series also acts as a critique of social documentary, to bring to the surface the subjectivity of the photographer – I can depict these towns exactly as I want to; all of these images are real, even if none are wholly ‘true’.

Photography, like politics, simplifies.

Wish You Were Here

A tribute to those who lost their lives in the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice in July 2016. The images benefit from being viewed as large as possible.

Flowers

Chairs

Postcards

Trees

Boats

Bakery

Vieux Nice

A photo essay on Vieux Nice, the 'old town' neighbourhood of the famous French Riviera city.

Aerial view

Side street

Three wheeler

Painter man

Peek-a-boo

Café time

Socca man

Red

Cool dude

Dragon garage

Scooter

Shutter

Fracktivism

Photos taken at various public events organised by anti-fracking protest groups in North Yorkshire over the summer of 2016.

Disappearing Britain

A project aiming to capture a few elements of British life that are becoming obsolete in this generation.

Cobbles

Sweet shop

Charity box

Phone box

Phone

Milk float

Milk bottle

Mini

Pint pot

Flat cap

Fun in the Sun

A month or so in the life of The Sun Inn, my local pub – a lively place with lots of community activities going on.

The Sun Inn

Bar chat

Full Bodied & Mature

Sharon

Quiz night

Quiz night

Quiz takings

Dog-friendly

Private party

Andy's 40th

Andy's 40th

Darts

Acoustic music night

Acoustic music night

Acoustic music night

Exhibition launch

Look Closer

The brief for this assignment was 'Two Sides to a Story'. I chose as the subject the walking routes surrounding my home town and juxtaposed wide, colourful landscapes with a grittier view of public substance abuse you get if you look more closely.

High Back Side 1

High Back Side 2 (Lager)

Haygate Lane 1

Haygate Lane 2 (Vodka)

Costa Beck 1

Costa Beck 2 (Cider)

Newbridge Woods 1

Newbridge Woods 2 (Wine)

Crook Lane 1

Crook Lane 2 (Solvent)

Middleton 1

Middleton 2 (Tramadol)

Photographer's Block

I was supposed to do an assignment for my photography degree using a white shirt as a prop. But I was stumped, I just couldn't get started. So instead I turned my photographer's block into the subject of the assignment.

The fear of the blank page

This project was supposed to be about a white shirt, but I was blinded by its whiteness

My mind is never completely blank

Little thoughts are always swirling

Sometimes quite random thoughts

Sometimes quite structured thoughts

The more I try to will ideas into life, the quicker they fade

Sometimes it feels like I'm getting somewhere

But more often it feels like my ideas are hiding behind something

Only when I stop trying so hard do the clouds begin to clear

Surface Tension

Do you know the phrase ‘to meet yourself coming back‘? My life has been like that for the last few years.

For a while I felt a bit overwhelmed, spread too thin and unable to focus. These images are my attempt to portray how this feels by depicting my varied encounters with surface versions of myself.